The OurEnergyLibrary aggregates and indexes publicly available fact sheets, journal articles, reports, studies, and other publications on U.S. energy topics. It is updated every week to include the most recent energy resources from academia, government, industry, non-profits, think tanks, and trade associations. Suggest a resource by emailing us at info@ourenergypolicy.org.
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Since the 1970s California’s residential electricity consumption per capita has stopped increasing, while other states’ electricity use continued to grow steadily. Similar patterns can be seen in non-electric energy, industry, and transportation. What accounts for California’s apparent energy savings? Some credit the strict energy efficiency standards for buildings and appliances enacted by California in the mid-1970s.
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View Full ResourceAmericans spend $432 billion a year powering their homes, stores and offices, on par with what US businesses spend on employee health insurance. United Technologies Corporation, in collaboration with the Rhodium Group, analyzed the impact of a 30% improvement in US building efficiency by 2030. We find that such an improvement is possible with existing technology and design practices and would generate $65 billion dollars per year in savings, net of investment costs, for American households, businesses and governments.
In corporate finance terms, investing in a 30% improvement in building energy efficiency would have an internal rate of return (IRR) …
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Energy is essential to American economic success. Like capital, labor and land, energy is an economic input, or “factor of production,” that determines the speed and quality of economic growth. Countries grow either through more economic input or by using that input more efficiently. For example, when the size of a country’s workforce grows, so does its economic potential. But it’s not actually the number of workers that matter from an economic standpoint so much as the amount of work they are able to perform collectively. So improvements in education and technology that make workers more productive grow the economy …
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In a new Center for American Progress report released today called “The Networked Energy Web,” we argue that this upheaval in the energy sector can best be understood as the next wave of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution. Just as previous waves of technological change in wireless communications or digital data management brought with them fundamentally different engineering approaches, new business models, and ultimately dramatically changed industry structures, so too a new wave of growth, restructuring, and reinvestment are coming as our 19th century energy infrastructure collides with 21st century information management tools. In this paper we offer …
View Full ResourceEconomic growth based on use of non renewable energy constitutes a serious problem because of, especially, negative environmental externalities. Growth of energy consumption and gas emissions are the principal negative impacts of these modes of development. However, the sustainable development requires modes of development which demand few of energy and produce few of pollutant gas. Literature has interested of this problematic in an aggregate or disaggregate contexts. The first is concerning the relationship between economic growth, domestic energy consumption and gas emissions. The second is corresponding to the same relationship but per economic sector. Industry and transport sectors are more …
View Full ResourceConsumers regularly forgo purchases of high efficiency appliances that appear to be cost effective at a reasonable rate of return. While some argue that this is a true revelation of preferences for appliance features, this “efficiency gap” can be largely explained by a combination of market and behavioral failures that reduce consumers’ ability to evaluate the relative value of appliances and skew preferences toward initial cost savings, undervaluing future reductions in operating costs. These failures and barriers include externalities of energy use, imperfect competition between manufacturers, asymmetric information, bounded rationality, split incentives, and transaction costs (Golove 1996).
Recognizing the social …
View Full ResourceImproving the energy efficiency of industry is essential for maintaining the viability of domestic manufacturing, especially in a world economy where production is shifting to low-cost, less regulated developing countries. Numerous studies have shown the potential for significant cost-effective energy-savings in U.S. industries, but the realization of this potential is hindered by regulatory, information, workforce, and financial obstacles. This report evaluates seven federal policy options aimed at improving the energy efficiency of industry, grounded in an understanding of industrial decision-making and the barriers to efficiency improvements. Detailed analysis employs the Georgia Institute of Technology‟s version of the National Energy Modeling …
View Full ResourceMeeting the energy needs of future generations without overheating the planet is one of the most vexing challenges of our time. In an increasingly resource-constrained world, improving the energy efficiency of industry must be part of the climate solution. In addition to environmental, security, and competitiveness benefits, improving industrial energy efficiency will deliver a return on investment that contributes to the profitability of enterprises and strengthens the nation’s employment base.…
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